


Curds and Whey

by AndreaDTX



Series: Lady Spider, Little Spider [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Comfort, Cooking, Fluff, Gen, Mama Spider, Peter and Natasha bonding, Seriously 2k of Fluffiness, super family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-26 23:26:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20035834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaDTX/pseuds/AndreaDTX
Summary: When Tony's away for the day, he leaves Natasha in charge of Peter, just in case. Peter, intimidated by Black Widow's reputation, plans to avoid her. But he finds out that Natasha isn't actually all that bad.





	Curds and Whey

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write a Natasha & Peter fluff piece for a while so here it is.
> 
> EDIT: I'm open to suggestions of other fluffy things Natasha and Peter could do together. Drop me a line in the comments if you have a scenario you'd be interested in reading.

_Had 2 step out. Nat’s ur designated adult. BB soon. _

Peter frowns at the text. Most people wouldn’t believe it came from a billionaire genius, but Mr. Stark values speed and efficiency over grammar or spelling and uses more short hand than Peter, Ned or MJ combined.

Sliding his phone back in his pocket, Peter sighs. Knowing the eccentric inventor, ‘having to step out’ could mean anything from Miss Potts finally caught up with him and forced him into a board meeting to he got a sudden hankering for authentic _souvlaki _and jetted off to that charming _estiatorio _he visited once in Mykonos.

The thought of food makes Peter’s stomach grumble hungrily.

Well, he definitely isn’t going to bother the Black Widow with petty needs like ‘I’m bored’ or ‘I’m hungry’ so he putters around his own floor until his stomach starts to ache, forcing to him to seek out sustenance.

“FRIDAY, anybody in the kitchen right now?” he asks, eyeing the elevator.

“Not at the moment, Peter,” the AI replies in a crisp Irish accent.

Peter nods. He can go down, throw together a sandwich or something really quickly and be outta the way before anyone even realizes he’s been there.

He makes his way to the communal floor where they normally have breakfast. When everybody’s home, the kitchen would be brimming with food, drink, and people. But right now, the space is empty and spotless, suggesting the others either left really early this morning or maybe even didn’t come home last night. Padding across the space in socked feet, Peter pulls open the fridge and scavenges inside, looking for anything sufficiently edible. He nudges aside a container of takeout marked 'MINE. EAT IT AND DIE!!!!' to pick up a blue Tupperware container. He pops it open, giving the contents a cautious sniff, recoiling slightly before taking an even more cautious bite, all the while eyeing the death threat takeout box. Maybe he should just ask FRIDAY to order something.

Before he can make a decision the plastic bowl is snatched out of his hands and the fridge shuts with a snap. Black Widow tosses the unidentifiable food in the trash, container and all.

“You’ll get food poisoning, _melky._”

Startled, Peter stumbles back, banging his hip painfully against the island in the center of the kitchen.

“I don’t really get sick. Not since I got my powers…” he says, even as he rubs ruefully at what will probably be a bruise an hour or so from now.

She purses her lips. “For all you know, that could’ve been something Thor stashed. Some of the stuff he smuggles here from Asgard can even make Steve sick.”

Oh. He hadn’t thought about that.

“Sorry,” he mumbles meekly.

“Don’t be sorry, be better,” she barks, almost like an automated response.

Peter shrinks away from the sharpness of the words. She pauses, blinks a few times, then tuts, her whole body shifting into a softer stance.

“_I’m _sorry,” she says, much softer. “Are you hungry?”

He hesitates, trying to feel out the abrupt change in tone, before nodding. “I could eat. I… I’m always kinda hungry. I think it’s a metabolism thing. Like my powers are burning through my energy stores faster than I can take it in.”

Her red hair bobs as she nods. “Sounds familiar. I will make you a meal, _da_?”

Without waiting for him to agree, she starts pulling out ingredients and cookware, telling him they’re making _piroshkis. _He doesn’t know what that is, but in a room full of sharp utensils, he’ll happily go along with whatever she suggests.

The Widow pulls out a big, glass mixing bowl.

“Do you cook?” she asks.

Peter scrunches his face a bit. “Not unless you count nuking something in the microwave as ‘cooking.’”

“I don’t,” she says succinctly. “We start with the dough.”

She pours milk into a mixing cup and pops it into the microwave for a minute. When it’s done, it goes into the bowl. Then, sugar and yeast. She’s not really measuring, but her brow furrows in concentration as she eyeballs how much of each she’s using. Then she steps back.

“It needs to prove,” she explains when he gives her an askant look.

“Prove?”

She tilts her head for a brief second in thought. “Dissolve. The yeast needs time to dissolve into the milk.”

“Oh, yeah. Prove. Like chemistry. I knew that,” Peter says with a nervous chuckle.

While the yeast dissolves, she pulls out salt, eggs, and butter. She hands him the stick of butter and a small bowl. “Pop that in the microwave. 60 seconds.”

Peter takes both, looking from the stick to the bowl wondering if he was supposed to unwrap it. Sixty seconds was long enough to completely melt the butter not just soften it, right?

“Take the wrapper off,” she says without even looking at him.

“I know,” he says defensively, even though he hadn’t.

She hums and continues working.

When he turns back with the melted butter she has him pour it in. She follows it with salt then lets him crack eggs. After she fishes out the flecks of eggshell he accidentally contributed, she shows him how to whisk the mixture before letting him take over as she slowly adds in flour. When the stuff in the bowl actually starts to look like dough, she powders some flour onto the counter. She shows him how to knead the dough and then has him take over.

“Put some of that brawn to work,” she teases as he really starts to put some shoulder into his effort.

The tips of his ears tingle but he refuses to blush.

After about ten minutes, she has him scoop the worked dough back into the bowl which she then covers with a towel and sets own a shelf.

“It needs about forty-five minutes to rise,” she says. “In the meantime, we’ll work on the filling. What’s your favorite kind of fruit?”

“Banana. Wait you mean like for dessert, right? Cherry. Cherry’s the best.”

They stand side by side as they pit cherries.

“You know, I didn’t really expect you to be into cooking.”

She looks at him and arches a brow. “Because I’m not feminine enough to like cooking?”

“No! Yes! No!” he blurts nervously, yelping as he accidentally jabs himself with the pitting skewer. “I mean, you’re as feminine as you wanna be, but you’re also like really, _really _badass so I just don’t think of cooking when I think of you.”

She tilts her head in acceptance.

“When I escaped the Red Room, I spent a lot time trying to figure out who I was if I wasn’t their Widow,” she says as she punches a skewer through several cherries in rapid succession, knocking the pits loose. “When Hawkeye brought me into SHIELD, they threw every kind of therapy they could at me.”

She slides a handful of pitted cherries towards Peter to chop.

“For some reason, I gravitated towards cooking. Maybe because it was domestic in a way that _they _would’ve never allowed. Not unless you could use it to poison someone…” she says with a pause and thoughtful slant of her head before focusing once more. “Then one day, the lady in charge started talking about ‘home cooking’, about the foods that remind you of your childhood and I realized that was all a big blank for me. I mean everybody has a favorite food from when they were a kid. I bet you know yours.”

“Peanut butter and banana sandwiches with a little bit of chocolate sauce on toasted bread,” Peter says without even really thinking, his mouth watering at the thought.

Her brows lift in an amused way that says, _See?_

“When I was a child, food was fuel, not something to be savored or wished for. Sometimes it was a tool for punishment or bartering. But never something that just made you happy.”

She slides the last of the pitted cherries towards Peter and rubs at her forehead before turning to lean against the counter.

“So, I started looking up recipes, kind of a way to learn about my culture, the parts they kept from me. In a way… looking for home helped me find myself. Traditional Russian recipes made me feel more… grounded, more connected… It was nice. Even if I had no one other than my work partner and my handler to share it with.”

The conversation fades into silence. Peter chops carefully, thinking. He knows that the Black Widow-- that _Natasha_ is not exactly known for sharing. It feels like she’s given him… a gift.

“I don’t remember much about my mom,” he says slowly, “but I remember she used to make this cake with fruit and nuts and all kinds of stuff in it. It was so good. I asked May about it once. It’s called dump cake.”

Natasha scrunches her nose with a small laugh. “Dump cake?”

“I know,” he laughs back. “Horrible sounding name, but it’s nothing bad. It’s because you dump all the ingredients in at once.”

“Ahh,” she says with a tilt of her head.

“I’ve only tried to make it once,” he says. “It was a disaster. It came out burnt on top and super rubbery on the bottom. And it was before my powers so I actually _did _give myself food poisoning. In my head, I remember it being super moist, because of the fruit, ya know? But I think I confused moist and raw.”

“The dangers of learning…” she comments with a tsk of her tongue, dumping the cherries into a sauce pan before adding a mixture of water, cornstarch, and lemon juice.

“Stir,” she commands, handing Peter a wooden spoon.

He takes it and does as she orders. Over the next ten minutes or so, the concoction begins to steam then simmer before bubbling and then boiling. Peter lets the spoon go to flex his fingers, the muscles in his hand starting to crap.

“Keep stirring,” she admonishes lightly. “If you let it sit even for a moment, the cornstarch will settle to the bottom and go all lumpy and gross.”

Peter shakes his hand out and goes back to stirring.

Finally, when she’s satisfied with what she sees, she nudges him aside and pulls the sauce pan off the stove eye and adds a few drops of vanilla before giving it a few final whisks with the spoon.

“Cooking is a good skill to have,” she says off handedly as she pulls the pan off the heated coil.

“I know. May says women like a man that can cook.”

Natasha gives a dismissive shrug of her shoulder and places the pan into a bowl of ice water. “If that’s important to you. I sure as shit didn’t learn to cook because it might attract a man. It’s a good skill because if you’re away from civilization and fast food, you still know how to throw together basic ingredients so you don’t starve.”

Peter makes an appreciative noise. “It sounds better when you put it that way. But still, it can’t hurt to have a way to impress a girl.”

Natasha dusts a fresh layer of flour onto the counter and kneads the risen dough.

“So, is there someone who has caught your eye?”

Peter thinks of Liz then MJ.

“Maybe,” he says shyly. “But she doesn’t really know I exist.”

As they cut the dough and roll it flat, Peter talks about how Michelle always seems to be around but he never knows what to say to get her attention.

“Whenever I do manage to say something, it’s so painfully stupid I end up wishing I’d just kept my mouth shut.”

“You just have to be more confident,” Natasha says as they spoon the cherry filling into the dough squares. “Trust me, you’d be surprised how many people are attracted to confidence even to their own detriment.”

Peter is wise enough to simply brush the egg wash over their _piroshkis _rather than point out that it may have something more to do with how pretty Natasha is. She’s attractive in the same way May is. Well, different ‘cause May is his aunt, but he knows that guys think she’s pretty and say or do goofy things they otherwise wouldn’t just to get her attention. 

“Maybe,” he says. “I guess I’m just not a confident kind of guy.”

She gives him a look as she fries the _piroshkis. _“You’ll grow into it. I’m sure of it.”

“Thanks,” he says softly, oddly moved by her assurance. “You’re a good listener.”

”It’s part of my gig,” she says with a friendly wink.

When the _piroshkis _have cooled enough to plate, Peter and Natasha end up in the theater room with their pastries and big glasses of icy lemonade. Natasha convinces him to watch a Spanish-language movie about a mariachi who is avenging the death of his lover at the hands of his cartel boss half-brother. The action is so over the top cheesy it's laughable compared to what they’ve seen in real life.

As the movie wraps up, Peter can’t even remember why he’d been dreading having to spend the day with Natasha. He’s actually pretty lucky to have her as his designated adult.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're curious, the YouTube videos that inspired this story: [Meat and Cheese Piroshkis](https://youtu.be/FtGhRsiPr9E) and [How to Make Cherry Pie Filling](https://youtu.be/HchvD-3PDQY)


End file.
